David Bedwell (b. 1956), Professor of Microbiology, completed his undergraduate studies in Microbiology at Purdue University (B.S. with Honors, 1979). His graduate work was done with Dr. Masayasu Nomura at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, (Ph.D., 1985) and a postdoctoral fellowship was carried out in Dr. Scott Emr's laboratory at Caltech. Dr. Bedwell joined the faculty at UAB in 1988.

At the national level, he served on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, and has served as chair of both the Molecular Genetics B (MGB) and Molecular Genetics C (MGC) Study Sections of the National Institutes of Health. He has reviewed manuscripts for >60 scientific journals (including Science, Nature, and Cell). He was elected Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology in 2011.

At the institutional level, he currently serves as Interim Chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics (2016-present). He previously served as chair of the UAB School of Medicine Faculty Council (2016) and Chair of the Dept. of Microbiology Promotions Committee (2009-2012). He also served as Director the the UAB Cell and Molecular Biology (CMB) Graduate Program (1996-2002).

Research in Dr. Bedwell’s lab studies the mechanistic details of translation termination and Nonsense-Mediated mRNA Decay (NMD), which is a cellular mechanism that regulates mRNA abundance based on the presence of nonsense mutations in eukaryotes.
We are also investigating whether pharmacological agents can suppress nonsense mutations that cause genetic diseases. It is hoped that either nonsense suppression alone or in combination with NMD suppression will ultimately provide a therapeutic benefit for a broad range of human genetic diseases caused by nonsense mutations.